Auburn's Aussie punter among latest imports for college game

Marc Weiszer @marcweiszer

Thursday

Nov 8, 2018 at 2:01 PMNov 9, 2018 at 8:10 AM

The Deep South’s oldest rivalry will be brand new for a player from Down Under.

“I don’t know too much about it to be honest,” Auburn punter Arryn Siposs said. “Obviously, it’s a rivalry for a reason and one of those games that everyone gets hyped for and something that certainly both teams want to win.”

Siposs is still learning the ways of life in the SEC, more than 9,500 miles from his home in Melbourne, Australia.

He’ll punt to one of college football’s most explosive return men Saturday in Georgia’s Mecole Hardman, who returned a punt 65 yards last week.

That came off the foot of Kentucky’s Max Duffy, who also hails from Australia and is friends with Siposs, but had not given him a scouting report as of Tuesday.

“I haven’t asked him just yet, but I probably should,” Siposs said. “That would be a good idea because he’s obviously quite dangerous and the more information or knowledge that I know about him probably the better.”

Siposs is ranked 10th in the nation in punting at 45.7 yards per punt and is fourth in the SEC. Kentucky’s Duffy is 12th in the nation and fifth in the SEC at 45.1.

Both trained at Prokick Australia in Melbourne, where budding punters have been schooled for the American game since 2007.

“It’s going pretty well considering it’s their first year,” Nathan Chapman, Prokick’s head punting coach, said in a phone interview from Australia this week.

Both Siposs and Duffy played professionally in Australian rules football. So did Chapman, who played for 10 years before a preseason stint with the Green Bay Packers.

The 25-year-old Siposs spent five seasons with the St Kilda football club.

“We saw him on the Internet and got film and we’re very intrigued,” said Auburn coach Gus Malzhan, who called him “one of our MVPs,” this week. “I got him here on an official visit, really liked the character that he had. He’s a very experienced guy being older.”

Siposs spent just under a year training at Prokick Australia, which has a 14-month program that costs about $10,000 U.S., but can payoff with college scholarships.

“You don’t just send anyone who can kick a football to the SEC, there’s more demands for performance and the ability to back it up and deliver,” Chapman said. “We had to make sure we had two good competitors who have been around that professional environment to step in and do the job. If you send someone there who doesn’t know how to handle it and have coping mechanisms…you put undue pressure on the player. These guys have exceptional talent and therefore were a really good fit and something we presented to those coaches.”

Georgia landed a new punter of its own this offseason in freshman signee Jake Camarda from Norcross, the No. 1 punter in the 247Sports Composite. The second-ranked punter was Ryan Bujcevski, another ProKick Australia product, who is Texas’ punter this season.

He replaced Michael Dickson, the 2017 Ray Guy Award winner for nation’s top punter who also came from Chapman’s program and was a NFL fifth-round draft pick by Seattle.

The last five Ray Guy winners came from Prokick Australia, including Mitch Wishnowsky (Utah, 2016), Tom Hackett (Utah, 2014 and 2015) and Tom Hornsey (Memphis, 2013).

Six of the top 12 punter signees for 2018 were from Australia and three of the top 15 for 2019 are from ProKick Australia: Jordan Sandy (Texas Tech), Jack Bouwmeester (Michigan State) and Tom Hutton (Oklahoma State).

Georgia coach Kirby Smart, who has been creative in adding pieces to his roster through the transfer market, said players from outside the U.S. are on his program’s radar.

“Especially from a kicker’s standpoint,” he said. “It’s kind of been a trend going on in college football with the Australian style punters, especially the guys that can punt traditional and then also punt while moving and rugby and things like that. All the kicking services that most of us use, they go and find those guys and then most of us are all in competition to get the best ones. Some of them are from other countries, especially Australia when it comes to the kicking.”

Smart said possible college prospects from outside the U.S. have visited Georgia in the summer to work out and be evaluated.

Georgia’s most notable international player was All-SEC linebacker Richard Tardits from France, who played from 1985-88. Tackle George Hansen from Calgary (1957-58) played in the Canadian Football League.

Chapman said coaches on staff at Auburn and Kentucky have had players from his program before and he's talked with former Georgia special teams coordinator Shane Beamer and current special teams coordinator Scott Fountain in the past.

There are about 40 Prokick alums currently on the FBS level, Chapman estimates.

“We play a sport over here that enables us to kick the football,” he said. “It’s a matter of tailoring skills and developing and changing technical things to transform it into the American punt. We spend a lot of time doing it with the traditional spiral which we practice 80 percent of the time, but we also know that the college game’s changed direction that there are two or three different kicks that you need to do.”

Siposs said Australian Rules Football requires a player to be “quite fit” because games are fast-paced and go longer than 60 minutes.

As for the ball he kicks back home, “it’s a little bit bigger and a little bit more of an oval shaped.”

Siposs is in group texts with other Aussie punters including Duffy, UTEP’s Mitchell Crawford, Louisiana-Lafayette’s Rhys Burns and N.C. State’s Mackenzie Morgan.

Their chats include “a good bit of everything, what’s going on back home in Australia and how Pro Kick’s going to the games we played on the weekend and how everyone went, maybe organizing a get-together to be able to catch up with each other maybe at the end of the football season.”

The first college football game that Siposs ever experienced was the Tigers’ season opener against Washington in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium in front of 70,103 fans.

“It was absolutely crazy,” he said. “Just the passion that they have for every drive that’s on was incredible.”

It’s a feeling that other Aussie punters in the years to come seem sure to experience as well.

“It seems to be working at the moment,” Sippos said.

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